This International Women’s Day is a chance to reflect on the last two years and the role women have played in steering us through the pandemic. It is a time to consider the lessons and decide how we wish to proceed.
When women stepped in to support our war time efforts during WWI and WWII, and right now in the Ukraine as notably highlighted by First Lady Olena Zelenska, they don’t step back. The changes we have seen in our society so greatly impacted by COVID, will change the course of women forever – or will it? When it is easy to be overwhelmed by the inequity around us, I choose to take a hopeful view and ask, what do we want the future for women to look like?
As a leader of the nursing profession- the largest health workforce in Australia which is 92% women and has been on the frontline on the fight against COVID globally in hospitals, vaccination clinics, community, schools, the aged care sector, policy and government, I know we have forever been changed. Our health systems have been changed. Our expectations of our healthcare have been changed. And at the heart of the way we have responded to the pandemic on the frontline are women.
Nurses have been abused, stretched, over-worked, and underpaid, with many earning similar rates to retail workers – despite degrees and post-graduate qualifications as well as doing a job that puts their lives on the line.
The pandemic has illuminated the issues we knew were already in play, the silencing of nurses wanting to speak out, the exclusion of nurses from discourse around public policy, the obscene number of incidents of occupational violence experienced, the lack of nurses in Aged Care, and the pay inequity surrounding the profession.
There are approximately 400,000 nurses in Australia, who turn up at every important milestone in our lives, from birth to death – and it is time their voice was heard.
Nurses are making history right now.
So, like in post-war time, when women didn’t want to go quietly back to the kitchen, we too won’t go quietly back to silence. We’ve lead Australia through the pandemic health crisis, and we won’t be getting back in the box as we enter the post-COVID era.
The timing is right for the profession and women everywhere to stand up and stand out and demand inclusion at the decision-making tables of Australia, our experience and insight are too valuable to ignore. And the girls of today and the future deserve better.
But we need allies. And friends outside of health to help us change the narrative.
And so, I ask you to rethink what you know about nursing and how you could bring nursing into your circle of influence today.
If we don’t, we all lose. Think about who will nurse you next when you need it? Who is nursing your parents today? Who will nurse your children, your grandchildren? What experience and education will they have? How much will they get paid? How will they be treated in their workplace? How will the support, treatment and respect nurses experience impact you? Who will want to be a nurse if we don’t make history now through systemic and societal change?
We are leading the conversation, but it is one we all must have. This International Women’s Day, I ask that we all work together to bridge the gap on not only pay equity, but the gap in expectations we have for women’s lives everywhere.